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Continued from page 2

You’ve heard this over and over. If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we [fill in the blank with whatever energy scheme you like]? It is true that engineers are amazing creatures, and given a task to do something or build something, they can do almost anything at least once. But the global energy challenge is not the same as putting a man on the moon. It is the same as putting every man, woman and child on the moon. Maybe in the far future that is doable, but not with anything like an Apollo program.

The aforementioned Three Fallacies are, once stated, perhaps obvious. But it is embarrassing how often they are implicitly if not explicitly ignored in the constructs and proposals from people who should know better, not mouth-breathing techno-dweebs, but adults in the policy, pundit and political world.

Still, you gotta love the Italians. Maybe they, the home of Marconi, Maserati and Fermi, will pull it off. Italy is the home of elegant engineering, from the pavement rippling Ferrari, to Fiat’s record-setting elegantly efficient new mass-market four-stroke engine. As a physicist (with some Italian roots – thanks Mom), I’m rooting for them.

The tug of magical solutions is irresistible. But what we do today is in historical context already magical. The great forecaster and author Arthur C. Clarke famously said, in one of his three laws of prediction: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In the context of history, we are performing magic today.

Compressing fire magically produced an internal combustion engine. The venturi magically converted a stream of gas to a rocket engine. Drilling through 20,000 feet of rock from a floating platform in 10,000 feet of water --– Colonel Drake could hardly have dreamt that such magic would ensue from his 69-foot world-changing Pennsylvania oil well in 1859. Microseismic imaging and steerable robotic drilling unleashes gushers of billions of barrels of oil and gas from previously worthless shale rocks. A microscopic layer of cadmium and tellurium converts sunlight to electrons (see First Solar [see First Solar [NASDAQ:FSLR]). Atoms are transmuted –- yes alchemy is real, achieved after millennia of mythology –- and in the process of splitting unleash astronomical quantities of energy. We’ve come to take all such magic for granted.

Energy underpins everything; our food, transport, buildings, manufacturing, services and information. But it is the scale of what society requires that defies imagination. A single Google-class data center consumes as much electrical power as 500 Tesla electric cars running flat out 24 by seven. There are thousands upon thousands of such data centers. And the world’s total liquid fuel appetite? If the barrels produced were piled up, it would generate a stack that would be one mile high every three seconds. It is amazing that an infrastructure exists to find, extract and deliver such quantities – at any price.

The most magical of our current energy sources? Oil. Liquid hydrocarbon. If oil didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it. Its attributes are near magical, in terms of energy density, ease of transport, ease of storage, safety. The holy grail of any alternative to oil is to find, produce or invent a “drop-in” replacement molecule with the same properties as oil.

As for the energy future, when will we finally be able to turn the aircraft carrier in a different direction? It will happen in due course, but from a multitude of pushes, not a single inertia-defying move. There are abundant innovations in the energy pipeline; some even revolutionary. Even if the Italians are right – which I doubt – we need, to quote President Bush 41, a “thousand points of light,” not just some single magic bullet.

Let me end with two forecasts from the inimitable Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, quoting from his amusing but deeply insightful and still in print 1998 book, The Dilbert Future:

“Life in the future will not be like Star Trek”

And:

“In the future, scientists will learn how to convert stupidity into clean fuel.”

Is there a bet here? Root for the Italians if you’re like me. Wouldn’t it be fun if they were right? But if you’re an investor, go long oil; buy Exxon [NYSE:XOM], Schlumberger [NYSE:SLB], Transocean [NYSE:RIG] … you know the list. <>